Rinde Eckert

Writer. Librettist. Composer.Musician. Performer. Director

With a virtuosic command of gesture, language and song, this total theatre artist moves beyond the boundaries of what a 'play,' a 'dance piece,' an 'opera' or 'musical' might be, in the service of grappling with complex issues.

Eckert describes many of his characters as "little men with big ideas whose consequences of their hubris are often disastrous."

Sometimes tragic and austere, sometimes broadly comedic, entirely grounded by presence, his work is alchemical: moving from rumination and distillation to hard-won illumination, or its lack.

Steven Schick at the Peacock in the Paul Dresher Ensemble production of Schick Machine. | Credit: Chi Wang

What’s inside a Schick Machine? There are diagrams and equations, drawn on butcher paper; huge metal sculptures, balls, and hoops, and bells. A deconstructed pipe organ in the shape of a sunburst — called the Peacock — dominates the space. Somehow, Laszlo Klangfarben dreams, these mechanisms will work together in harmony, reconciling past and future, large and small.

Announcing the inaugural season of VOICES from The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and Artistic Advisor at Large Renée Fleming, featuring Rinde Eckert and other top music artists such as Leslie Odom Jr., Megan Hilty, Alan Cumming and others.

See the promo video from Five Beasts by Rinde Eckert in collaboration with Ned Rothenberg, Adam Matta and Mark DeChiazza, from its premiere performance at Les Subsistances in Lyon France, March 2015. Film by Mark DeChiazza.